


No One Is Alone

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-24
Updated: 2005-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 23:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus learned long ago not to make promises like these.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Is Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [](http://jazzypom.livejournal.com/profile)[**jazzypom**](http://jazzypom.livejournal.com/) for the wonderful beta! Lyrics at the end are from "No One Is Alone" by Stephen Sondheim. Song from the Broadway musical "Into The Woods" (1987).

Quiet has settled on Twelve Grimmauld Place this evening, thick and lulling, save for a gramophone playing in the background, a Muggle song that Remus remembers from a fairy-tale play. It is April, and raining steadily as is wont to do in a London spring; the gloom outside augmenting the chill in the ancient townhouse, though at this hour the room looks cheerful enough with a roaring fire in the grate. Outside the window the twilight darkens, enveloping Sirius and Remus in its embrace as they lie naked and tangled in each other on top of the sofa in the library. The moon rises, just past half-full, marking Remus' slow descent towards his monthly destiny; Remus notes its ascent, easy enough in the knowledge that it can't touch him just yet.

The current song on the record finishes; Sirius is dozing, sweaty and sated in the afterglow of sex, lashes fluttering against his cheek. Despite the chill their bodies and the fire throw off enough warmth to allow them to lie without covers in this room surrounded by books and old sleeping magic. Remus breathes lightly, anticipating the next song on the album soundtrack; the last song, the finale. The music starts and a lone voice rises above the background scratchiness of the vinyl disc.

It would have to be this song, Remus thinks with a touch of irony, rather fitting for this evening. He had seen the play as a Muggle-impersonating stagehand when it first opened in London's West end back in 1988; he'd smirked throughout the portrayals of the fairy-tale characters and beasts, especially the wolf (although the wolf costume was unexpectedly arousing, he'd had to admit). At the end though, he had been somehow unable to bear this particular song as the finale. Strange even how seven years past, something so simple as a Broadway song still had the power to rip open old wounds back then; wounds that now had fully scarred over again, Remus notes thankfully; though without meaning to, his arms tighten slightly around the sleeping man beside him.

He too is caught in the lull of grey weather and sated contentment, but the lyrics to this song take him back unexpectedly through his life, and he finds himself poking at fond memory. He hears an echo of Sirius at fifteen, his young voice clear and strong and just on the verge of manhood. It was the morning after the full moon, after Moony the wolf had spent a puzzling, but exhilarating night with three new-found comrades; a majestic stag, a terrified rat, and (best of all) a bear-sized, bounding black dog. They'd joined him in the Shrieking Shack, and, even more astoundingly, had let him out; the four ran through the grounds all night. Only knowing pain, not fun, Moony hadn't known what to do; though under the guidance of his comrades, he learned quickly enough, soon leading the way, pacing the others through the tangled undergrowth and shimmering pools throughout the Forbidden Forest.

In the Shack, after Remus transformed back that morning, the dog remained. For once Remus woke without major injury to himself, and he knew instinctively it had something to do with the animal in front of him. Remus at thirty-six remembers Sirius as proud and cocky after he shimmers from Padfoot to the boy.

"What do you think, Moony? You won't be alone now on the full moon anymore. Long as I'm here, you'll never be alone."

Remus at fifteen dearly wanted to believe as he stared into those steady grey eyes, flashing with hope and accomplishment. For the most part, Sirius did keep his boyhood promise, excepting for that one incident, up to Halloween 1981 and Godric's Hollow.

"Long as I'm here, you'll never be alone."

Sirius again, murmuring in his ear; only it is twenty years later and it is not an echo, the voice is no longer clear and confident but hoarse and hushed; the body no longer firm and young but thin, scarred and worn like his own. He's awake now, perhaps hearing the slight hitch in Remus' breathing as he listens to the song; he watches Remus intently and he slides a thumb across Remus' cheek, over his lips. Remus kisses his thumb reflexively.

Remus at thirty-six dearly wants to believe; just an hour ago he might have as Sirius beckoned him from the library desk, where he was poring over translations on ancient parchment, trying to find a key to Dumbledore's latest intuition. Sirius drew him by his hand to the moldering overstuffed sofa, the intent clear in his smoldering hooded eyes. Hardening instantly just with that promise of sex, Remus pulled Sirius tight against him with a greedy, demanding kiss. From then on, things were a lust-drenched blur of sharp smell and heady, salt-musk taste and searing touch, until Sirius entered and fucked him hard from behind, his sweat-slick chest pressed and convulsing rhythmically against Remus' equally slippery back. Fingers digging into his hips, Remus bucked back against Sirius, lost in the utter fullness until Sirius came deep inside him; feeling the jets of wet warmth flood inside his quivering body in communion, an offering, a gift. Remus lies on his back now, thinking of that as Sirius lies curled against him, and he remembers the similar promises made from earlier, made and broken in their turn; in a time of innocence and hope before they were ever involved in a hell like this, before the hell of the first time.

Remus had been alone ever since 1981, even in a roomful of people, even when with one other person and engaged in desperate acts of intimacy; obliteration, or perhaps absolution. None of them ever made the promises Sirius did, and for that he was grateful, but sometimes it only heightened his sense of isolation. It lifted somewhat, at Hogwarts, for a year with Harry, and disappeared entirely for a few brief, oddly blissful hours in the Shrieking Shack, even as he and Sirius, newly returned to the open, teamed together to kill the traitor. Returning for another year, lifting again when Sirius came to stay at his house, and suspended in Grimmauld Place; for he couldn't afford it disappearing again, only to have it return, perhaps forever. This is the beginning of a new war, a new cycle of horror and uncertainty that Remus must live every day he is outside here, that has scarred him as surely as his monthly transformations, as surely as Azkaban has scarred Sirius. Sirius too, cannot remain unscathed, for he also is locked in the war though from within, the confines of his ancestral home which continually threaten to extinguish his brilliance. Even now Remus suspects this may be only an idle, half-mad promise, made by a man already half-mad. While they have been together for months, he is careful not to let himself take too much, lest he come to expect it. He does not think about what he can give; they both have agreed, they give what they can.

Sirius props himself up on his elbow, looking down at Remus' lined face with a sober and thoughtful expression; his other hand glides down the raised scars on his thin chest, tracing his nipples, palming over his ribs and belly. Remus stares into those steady grey eyes; eyes that are haunted and unsure, perhaps, at the edges, if he fully believes his promise himself. It is only the magic of the afterglow, Remus thinks, that has seduced Sirius into making this vow again; all vows in the end are made to be broken no matter how earnest they are in the beginning, how true they seem.

But Sirius smiles then, a beatific curve on his thin lips, and slowly lowers his mouth to follow the trail of his searching fingers, to lave his tongue over each rise and hollow, each scar, nuzzling Remus' warm flushed skin, deliberately, lovingly. Remus arches his body up to meet him by instinct, Sirius' stubble scraping his abdomen, the blood pooling in his groin; Sirius' mouth ghosts over his navel, sandpaper-rough tongue flicking around and in, his hot and humid breath puffing down with maddening slowness to Remus' throbbing erection that is now straining for release.

When Sirius finally closes his mouth around him Remus moans in wanton need without hesitation; for in the end perhaps it is only this covenant of touch that matters, if he has this even in memory how can he ever be alone again? Remus' hips thrust against the wet velvet heat of Sirius' mouth, rising with each pulse of lips and tongue around him, his own long fingers threading firmly into Sirius' dark tangled hair to anchor him, to hold him fast and steady. Sirius lets him take control and fuck his mouth, taking him all the way in, his hands sliding underneath Remus to grip his buttocks. In this Remus recognizes Sirius does believe in his vow, and this is how he shows it; in Grimmauld Place, offering himself is perhaps the only way he can; so Remus accepts the promise and everything contained within it. It is the closest to an Unbreakable vow he will ever allow himself to come to.

Remus learned long ago not to make promises like these, though perhaps he never quite learned how to stop believing in them. Cached in this promise, now it is all sensation, lips and tongue and throbbing blood, as he thrusts into Sirius' mouth, faster and hotter and wetter and tighter until the pinpoint of brilliance behind his eyes explodes. Remus comes hard and fast moaning Sirius' name; he feels Sirius around him as Sirius sucks and swallows, willingly taking what Remus offers, until the last spasms of his release subside.

The fire begins to die down; after Remus is fully spent and no longer twitching, Sirius withdraws his mouth, laying his head on Remus' belly. Remus only feels the movement of Sirius' lips against his skin, does not hear the words; he decides he does not need to, he knows what they mean. The music has long since stopped, the needle repeating with a low click. Remus waves his hand briefly and the needle flies to its resting stand. His hand rests in Sirius' hair, silently returning the vow made, and he slowly drifts to sleep himself, safe in this odd cocoon, even as the larger curtain of darkness begins to fall.

_No one here to guide you,  
Now you're on your own.  
Only me beside you . . .  
Still, you're not alone.  
No one is alone, truly.  
No one is alone. _

_Sometimes people leave you  
Halfway through the wood.  
Others may deceive you  
You decide what's good.  
You decide alone,  
But no one is alone. _

_People make mistakes,  
Fathers, mothers,  
People make mistakes  
Holding to their own,  
Thinking they're alone. _

_Honor their mistakes  
Everybody makes  
one another's terrible mistakes.  
Witches can be right,  
Giants can be good.  
You decide what's right  
You decide what's good.  
Just remember . . . _

_Someone is on your side.  
Someone else is not.  
While you're seeing your side  
maybe you forgot:  
They are not alone.  
No one is alone. _

_Hard to see the light now  
Just don't let it go.  
Things will come out right now  
We can make it so.  
Someone is on your side  
No one is alone._


End file.
